Kay Thorpe - The Thirty-Day Seduction

Chelsea laughed. “It will soon mend.”

“English women have no romance in their souls!” he complained, slinging himself down on a lounger. “I’ll lie here and pine for what might have been between us!”

Kiria Pandrossos looked as if she found the repartee a little confusing. Obviously unaccustomed to the kind of relationship she and Dion had forged, Chelsea reflected. Kisses were the only form of intimacy they had exchanged-and those themselves light-hearted. They were neither of them looking for any kind of commitment.

The drinks arrived, borne by a youth wearing the seemingly mandatory dark trousers and white shirt of the serving classes in this country. Dion could well have carried them out himself, Chelsea thought, but doubted if the idea would have even occurred to him. Born into money the way he had been, he took service for granted.

“I was not informed that you had called for a car to bring you from the beach, or I would have been expecting you,” said Kiria Pandrossos when they each had their glass.

“I didn’t call,” her son confirmed. “Nikos brought us. He said he would be joining us for dinner tonight.”

“Ah, good! He was uncertain of his movements today. Hestia must be told that there will be two more at table.”

“Already done.” Dion paused to take a drink from his glass. “Florina will be happy to see our cousin.”

“As shall we all.” His mother sounded faintly reproving. “You must not tease your sister, Dion. Her emotions are too fragile.”

“It’s Nikos who does the teasing,” he retorted. “He knows how she feels for him, but he still holds back!”

“He will speak soon, I am certain. Dimitris needs a mother to care for him when his father is away from home. He must know this.”

So Nikos Pandrossos was to marry his cousin, Chelsea reflected, concentrating on her drink. At least, that appeared to be the hope. It would be a good move for the family; there was no doubt. It was Florina she felt sorry for-as she would feel sorry for any woman married to a man like Nikos Pandrossos. An autocrat if ever she saw one!

LOOKING inland, the bedroom to which she was eventually shown was as sumptuously furnished and decorated as the rest of the house; the wide bed draped in pale lemon silk to match the beautifully hung drapes, the floor carpeted in thickly piled Prussian blue. There was an en suite bathroom, complete with a sunken bath convertible to a Jacuzzi at the flick of a switch.

“I could hardly be anything else,” Chelsea confirmed when Dion expressed a hope that she would be comfortable. “This is sheer luxury!”

“My mother admires the Italian style of living,” he acknowledged. “You’ll find Nikos’s house very different.”

“A traditionalist, is he?” she hazarded.

“If you mean that he prefers the old ways to the new, then, yes.”

Chelsea kept her tone light. “With women very much secondary citizens, I take it?”

“Of course. Women are born to serve the male!” Grinning, Dion dodged the pillow she snatched up and slung at him. “Some women, at least.”

“Does Florina see her role in life that way?” Chelsea felt moved to ask.

“My sister,” he said, “will do whatever is necessary to achieve what she desires the most in life.”

“To marry Nikos?”

“Yes.”

Chelsea sat down on the bed-edge to unzip her bag and start taking things out, voice casual. “What happened to his wife?”

“The boat in which she and my aunt were returning from a visit to the mainland developed engine trouble and was driven onto rocks in a squall and sank. The crew escaped, but they were trapped below.”

“It must have been dreadful for him, losing them both together,” said Chelsea, in swift, surging empathy. “How on earth did he cope?”

“The way he copes with everything. No one ever knows Nikos’s true feelings.” Dion came away from the windowsill, where he had been leaning. “I’ll leave you to finish unpacking.”

“There’s little enough of it to do,” she said. “I hope you don’t go in for dressing up in the evening, because I’m going to be seriously letting the side down. I set out to travel light.”

Dion laughed and shook his head. “We are very informal. Not,” he added, “that you could look anything but beautiful whatever you wear. With eyes such as yours, you have no need of jewels!”

“Corn!” Chelsea was laughing too. “Pure, unadulterated corn!”

“It works with others,” he returned, unabashed.

She didn’t doubt it. Given the opportunity, most would be only too ready to respond to any line he cared to use, however corny. It was a source of some wonder to her still that he left her so relatively unstirred in the physical sense.

His cousin was a different matter, she had to admit. He radiated a sexual attraction impossible to ignore. Not that it made any difference to her prime objective.

So far she had no formulated plan of campaign. The ideal would be to find some way of putting him in her debt, although she couldn’t begin to think how that might be done. All she could do was play it by ear and hope for a break of some kind. Being nonconfrontational would be a good start.

Dion was watching her curiously. “You looked just then as if you had some problem,” he remarked. “Is it one I can help you with?”

“I was just wondering whether to go for a swim before I finish unpacking,” she improvised, holding up the bikini she had just taken out. “If it’s all right to use the pool, that is?”

“Why else would it be there?” he returned. “I’ll go and put on bathing trunks and we’ll swim together. You can find your way back out to the pool?”

“I’m sure of it.” Even if it had been a spur-of-themoment suggestion, the thought of a dip was tempting. It was still only just gone six-thirty, and dinner was hardly likely to be served before nine. Plenty of time to tidy herself up in. “I’ll see you out there,” she said.

The blue bikini looked just a little too brief for present circumstances. She put on a black one-piece suit instead, missing the fact that the smoothly clinging Lycra outlined her shape far more provocatively. An over-sized white shirt did double duty as a covering wrap; it would hardly do to parade through the house semi-naked. Her hair she tied back into her nape with a rubber band. There would still be plenty of time to wash it before dinner.

Kiria Pandrossos was gone from the terrace when she reached it, her place taken by a younger version who eyed the newcomer with a total lack of welcome.

“You must be Florina,” said Chelsea, extending a smile herself. “I’m Chelsea Lovatt, a friend of Dion’s.”

“Why are you here?” The question was abrupt.

Chelsea kept the smile going. “Your brother invited me. He’ll be out in a moment. We’re going to have a swim.”

The striking face failed to relax. “Dion treats our home as a hotel! He has no right to bring people here without first asking permission.”

“Your mother didn’t seem to mind,” Chelsea felt bound to respond, and saw the other’s expression sour even further.

“My brother can do no wrong in her eyes, but that does not make what he does right.”

Sibling jealousy, Chelsea concluded, feeling some sympathy. Sons were all-important in this country. Florina was a year or so older than her brother—of an age when she might be counted as being well and truly on the shelf marriage-wise. Waiting for her cousin to make a move wouldn’t have helped. In all fairness, the man should surely clarify his intentions.

Dion’s arrival was a relief. If he registered his sister’s lack of enthusiasm for their new guest he refused to acknowledge it.